Paul's Gospel from Christ

Well, this morning we're going to continue on in Galatians chapter 1. I spent a major portion of this week in Texas thinking about automated testing and software development and a lot less time on Galatians 1, 11 through 12 than I would have liked to have had.

But you'll be relieved to know that it's a very short passage with very direct text. So if I came up with really creative variations on what could be derived out of here through lots of thought, It would probably be heresy, so that's okay. I'm going to go ahead and read it out loud just for the sake of the recording. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

One of the things I think is important as we go through this first chapter is that Paul It's very systematic about his presentation of truth to the Galatians. How many of you, at the Doyle study on Wednesday nights, we've been going through Romans. Sadly, I haven't been able to make as many meetings as I would have liked, or times of fellowship as I would have liked. But as we've been going through, Paul is leveling a very logical argument. He builds and he builds and he builds logically. through the book of Romans and Galatians has a very similar pattern where Paul is going to start out with the foundation and verse one is a very critical foundation.

And verse 11 reiterates part of that foundation. So I've put in the text here, verse one, Paul, an apostle not sent from men or through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead. So you see this very first verse in Galatians 1 builds up and is restated in part in verses 11 and 12.

Why is it important for him to identify the authority by which he speaks? Even though I'm asking about verse 1. Well for Paul I think it is particularly important because he is presenting the new covenant and he is presenting it to Gentiles as well as Jews so there is a big change here and I think it is important for the people to realize that what he is teaching is truth from God. and not something that he's made up or something that he's heard from someone else, but that it came directly from Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Well, what happens when you are, you know, I'm not sure that the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses show up to each one of your houses regularly, but when they come to your house, by whose authority do they say they speak? The Jehovah's Witnesses say, we have the revelation of God. This is Jehovah who sent us. And the Mormons, as Stan said, have Joseph Smith. And they speak with their authority, which they say came from God. So they claim, basically, an apostolic authority, just like we do with the scriptures. How do we know that an apostle is an apostle, according to the New Testament? They saw Christ, and then what do they go about doing after they've seen Christ? They begin spreading the word and reaching people with the news of Christ.

So, when we have this, we have Paul in verse 1 saying that he's not sent for man, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. When we fast forward to verse 11, he says, For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which is preached by me is not according to man. He's really concerned about man. Why would he be concerned about man? We're basically good, right? We all follow the golden rule and we love one another a lot. Everything always goes well. Nobody needs a military force. Nobody ever abuses their military power.

Stan? It's, uh, Mike Rosen always says that, uh, a lie can be a halfway around the world before truth gets its shoes on. That's, uh, that's unfortunately, uh, more accurate in places than I like to hear, but it's true. We often find ourselves presented with half-truths or half-information, especially with 24-hour news. When news is breaking, it means it's usually broken when it got to you. You've got to work on that. Now, I kind of jumped a little bit ahead, but let me ask you this. Who is he addressing in verse 1? Who is the noun that he is addressing?

What does he call these believers in Galatia? Brethren. He calls them brethren. He is still using an endearing term. He is reminding them of the relationship that they have through God. We can go back to Ephesians chapter 3 where Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus that they are under or of the same Father, God's Father. But he does want to, you know, he delivers this intimate word and this relationship word so that as he's addressing them, and yes there's some intensity in Galatians, he knows that it's with love. He doesn't just say, hey you crazy folks in Galatia, which is probably if I were in the flesh how I would write it. But he instead addresses them as brethren. So he reminds them of their salvation. And then he continues on and he says that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.

What's interesting there in the Greek structure is that the gospel is what? Evangelion, I believe is the word. Preached is actually a derivative of evangelized. So the good news that I good news to you. And he says, if you were to literally translate the Greek, is not according to man. So I ask the question here in the handout, what is the gospel according to man? What are the variations you have heard, probably in conversations with those who are lost, on the gospel according to man? How does man think he's going to get to heaven?

Works. Humanism. Man wants there to be a way to get to God, but they don't want there to have to be anything that you have to really believe to get there. But if you really have to believe something, it's that you have to believe that you're a good person.

I think my dad has shared that they did a survey at Foothill College in California. And they asked a big swath of the students there how many of them they thought they were above average in their moral fortitude. And I believe he said it was 70% of the students surveyed thought they were above average. I am not a mathematician, but I can tell you that 70% of people can't be above average. Just saying. There's something wrong with that. There are some typical things that come with man-made Gospels.

Lack of seriousness of sin. Sin isn't that bad, or I'm not that bad. Or sin really doesn't even exist. Sometimes that's one of my favorites. I don't believe in sin. Degrees of sin. Yeah. They've got degrees of sin, and pretty much everybody above Hitler Hitler's the worst, Mussolini, the people who were responsible for killing, maybe Saddam Hussein. But I'm okay. Everybody else is okay. We're all right. So seriousness of sin, not so much. Sufficiency of man, that's one of my favorite things. Hey, man is basically good. How many of you have been to a Hollywood movie that really delivers the message that man is good? Actually, I should probably rephrase that. It's probably a shorter list. How many of you have been to a Hollywood movie that says man isn't good?

There's only a few of those. The ability of works to certify, guarantee, or earn salvation. We mentioned that. That's one of my favorites. If you get into a discussion with various folks and you start talking about how you get to heaven, there's going to usually be a list of things that you should and shouldn't do works.

Limited grace. They're going to define, they're either going to understand grace in a limited way or ignore it altogether. The thing that I like is that God, you know, I, I liked what I'm discussing with this, this with people, not that I actually like like, um, is, is grace is always sufficient except for, for Hitler, but they can't tell you why. So there's a distorted view of grace.

They have a limited God. Usually God is unable to govern. God couldn't deal with this. Or God clearly couldn't have dealt with it because he allowed Adam to sin. Or God needs help. God needs help. I mean, you have this God, but it's definitely a lowercase g. Certainly not the God as described in the Bible.

And the last one I hear, I was looking through Chester McCauley's notes on Galatians and he talked about the flattery of man. And that's similar to the sufficiency of man. But really the flattery of man is really saying how awesome we are. Sufficiency says, hey, we're good enough. Flattery, really, I am pretty awesome. Not really. I can guarantee you that I have my flaws. But Christ has made me what? He's dealt with that flattery and that sufficiency. What has he done?

Yeah, and I think, Randy, the contrast that leads into 11 are those verses that immediately precede it, isn't it? Yeah. In a sense, that captures almost all of these things that you've enumerated here, right? Yeah, well, and that's the thing, is that Paul builds up logically, and he's... I've been very careful as I went through my notes for 11 and 12, not to step too much on the toes of things moving forward, but he's going to... What he set up in the previous verses build up so logically and so consistently that it's a tremendous argument. If you were to say this is an attorney presenting a case, Paul is presenting a case. I said, philosophically speaking, we're going to get into some of the philosophy behind the importance of him identifying these things in just a few moments when we're dealing with the problem of logic.

So for instance, aren't all these things you've listed here another gospel? Oh, absolutely. They are another gospel. I have my wife's Bible. Where are you going to sit? I'm going to hand you your Bible. I carried it in. And see, now we're all looking at you.

All of these are an attempt at presenting another gospel. They're not sufficient. Why are they not sufficient? Why are man-made gospels not sufficient? Source is God. Source. They're man-made. The source is flawed and the source being flawed is a big deal.

If I come to you and I tell you anything, should you just take it on the authority of Randy or should you take it on the authority of I'm gonna go double-check that like the Bereans did? The Bereans are commended because they double-checked it. They said, hey, you are claiming to have the authority of God as an apostle I'm going to go check the other authorities of God that I have been given, which of course at that time was the Old Testament, and double check it. You're saying it says this, I'm going to go check the scrolls.

If I tell you something and I'm teaching through God's word, or I say I'm teaching through God's word, double check it. Worst case scenario, you just can confirm that God has revealed his truth to you and you've learned something. Well actually that's not the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is I'm teaching heresy or false truth and need to... false teachings and need to be corrected. Alright, let's keep going here.

The gospel according to God is able to identify a believer with Christ, which is the beginning of a tremendous life. A life that is not lived of the self, but is of God. Does the gospel of man lead to a life that is God, that is Christ? The gospel according to man is always the empowerment of man. The gospel according to God is obviously the empowerment of God, and that's enough. We could stop there and just spend some time meditating alone as believers and spend some quality time with the Lord.

Galatians 1.12, he continues on, For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul's reception of the gospel was part of his claim to its authenticity. When we looked at verse 1, why was it critical for him to not be sent from men, but instead to be sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father? Because that's an authentic source.

I've got listed down on the second page there, you'll see three bullet points. One is the source, one is the medium, and one is the message. Paul is saying the source is not man. That's critical. The source is God. He wasn't given the source of man, nor was he taught it by men. So that would be the medium. I had the three bullet points there. The medium for Paul was what? If he wasn't taught it by men. It's taught by Christ. It's taught by Christ. And the message that he got from the source through the medium of Christ was unique. So when we take a look at the gospel, we need to make sure that we understand the source, the medium, and the message.

I'm not going to lie and tell you that I understood how to present the gospel for most of my life as a believer. I remember as a young child being presented with the gospel, I remember praying a prayer and asking the Lord to save me. And then after that, I really was never equipped to understand the simplicity of restating the gospel for others. And I was actually pretty afraid in junior high that somebody would ask me to read somebody to the Lord. Hey, this person's hungry. Why don't you go talk to them about the gospel? Because I didn't know what that would have been.

I'm embarrassed to say that, but I'm grateful to tell you that I understand now that I need to tell them that Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again on the third day for their sins, so that they could have relationship with God, be identified to Him, and then of course we could get really verbose. That's why we have the New Testament. But you could simply present the Gospel. The Judaizers, as they were coming against Paul, They were treating him as though he were a man with a message from men that was false because it was from men. So Paul comes back and he says, I didn't get it from men.

It's not of this earth. It's not of this world. I didn't make it up. I didn't learn it from the other guy who made it up. When you talk about things like Buddhism, does Buddha claim some other worldly source of inspiration? He doesn't. It's a man-made philosophy towards humanitarianism. It was people later on who actually took it and turned it into a religion. Buddha just wanted, he wanted to see suffering stop. So it was this man-made method for let's have goodness towards people. It was the kind of thing that we as believers could level it at Buddhism that these Judaizers were trying to do to Paul.

Hey, he's just trying to tell you you've got to do this other religious thing, but it's really false because it's something that one guy made up. It's not the case. One of the things we need to look at is logically, what would be the problem if Paul had gotten the gospel from a secondary source? Let's say that instead of Paul, we're dealing with Timothy Wimowt, and the Judaizers come after Timothy.

What do they say? Did Timothy see Christ on the road to Gamascus? Did Timothy learn from the revelation of Christ or did he learn from Paul? The Judaizers come after Timothy, they can say, hey, you learned it from a man. But they would still be leveling it at the wrong place, wouldn't they? Because Timothy knew Paul and he knew that Paul didn't learn it from a man. When someone comes to you and says, oh, you're just man-made religion. You just believe this man-made religion stuff. What can you go to?

Where's your source? Where's your authority? God's Word. Is it God's Word? Or is it... I'm pretty sure men made it up. People say stuff like that. It's got errors in it. I love that one. Show me one. I've yet to have something you'd be able to show me one. The other thing is we'll take things out of context. I'll just take this out of context. Out of context, this sounds like it says one thing. And so they begin to level arguments, just like the Judaizers did. The world tries to level arguments against us, but they don't do it based on the context of scripture, they do it based on outside presuppositions. Stan? Isn't that the same problem that Jesus had?

That's why he kept saying that he and the Father were one and that everything that he did came from the Father. It was critical. Right. He had to keep repeating that message over and over again because people believed that you know, that he was not getting it from the source and that the source was the Sanhedrin and the Jewish religion and man-made law and all this other stuff that they were additions to the law. That was what was valid and here's this man who comes and says that he's preaching a gospel. He was a carpenter's son. Yeah, exactly. Well that's why Christianity is a person and not a religion, right? Yeah, the source is critical. It's absolutely crucial that we understand the source.

The other thing that we see here is that he says, Paul writes that it is not something he was taught. I was not taught it by men. Okay, now what's interesting about this, as I was looking at it, is Chester McCauley notes that the word he uses there indicates a practice that the rabbis had for teaching their knowledge to their students okay so he wasn't just saying hey I got taught it see we think taught it like I went to school and I had a teacher tell me 1 plus 1 equals 2 I remembered that and it was good and it was handy later on and I needed to do 1 plus 2 equals 3 but he's talking about the system that the Jews and remember we're talking about people who have been influenced by Judaizers would have used it was an entire process dedicated to passing down the ideas accurately So he's not even saying it was willy-nilly passed on by man. Because that's what something an atheist might level against the Bible. He will say, oh, not really reliable. Remember, before they had written languages, they passed it on by word of mouth. Man, those people, they did not go to school like I did. They probably were dodo heads.

And instead, what we actually have found, and this is something I thought was interesting, is that in Cultures where illiteracy is high, their ability to memorize information is really good. And that was something that kind of took me off guard because I thought illiteracy meant ignorant and stupid and dumb.

And I've been told that enough times. How could you possibly transmit information accurately? Well, we've all played telephone. Yes. When the person whispers gigglingly in one ear and you're supposed to return it to the next person in their ear gigglingly, you lose a lot of information.

But that's not the same as a constant retelling of stories as a family and carrying on the truth that's important. And then you get to a point where writing is relevant in the life of Joseph. Some of you might remember him. He was a prince of Egypt. They made a movie about it. The head writing.

So when you talk about communication of these ideas and being taught from a secular perspective, the ignorance and the stupidity that is sometimes foisted and described on these people that lived is a terrible stereotype that is not accurate. And the second thing is that in the Jewish culture to whom he was writing this to, it would have been a very consistent and methodological methodical system of communicating these ideas and passing them down. So when Paul says, I wasn't taught these things, He isn't being flippant with them. He isn't just saying, ah, it was just word of mouth.

He was saying the system over and over presenting the truth was not passed on to me. I got it from the right source through a unique medium. And when we talk about the medium, he had the revelation of Christ. Now, what's the unique thing about the revelation of Christ versus even had Christ just merely come in person and spoken to him? versus having a revelation? Well, he was actually taught over a period of time. It just wasn't a one-time visual thing that was transmitted.

Well, how much of this comment do you think refers to Acts 9 versus that that follows in Galatians that we're going to be dealing with over the next few weeks? Well, and that's the thing, is that it starts with 9 and it keeps going, and that's what I wanted to take a look at. Constancy. Repeated revelation, right? There was repeated revelation, but the other thing about a revelation where God reveals himself only to you in this way that he's communicating, it's not just that he was speaking the words, but that he was impacting your mind and your very being. With this person. With this person, yeah. And that's different. Let's jump back, we're going to separate ourselves from Paul for just a second and jump back to Acts chapter 2.

How did the work of God show up in the disciples in the upper rooms? He revealed, it was a revelation of the the Holy Spirit coming down as a ton of fire and he revealed himself in a new way to them and impacted them and imported his knowledge through the Holy Spirit to them.

Again, it wasn't a slow, gradual teaching process where we're going to use a method and a system to bring you to slowly understanding. We love Abby's school that she goes to because they have a systematic approach to teaching her and building on the knowledge and building on the knowledge. That's not the way this worked. I hate to use a computer term, but it would be more like downloading God's knowledge to Paul rather than simply building on it over a gradual systematic thing.

It wasn't that Paul was ignorant before, but it was simply that God gave him a revelation of the truth. the source and the medium were critical to make it unique. So, I think I've beaten that horse to death and I apologize, but I think it's important that we understand that.

It removes any of the Judaizers' immediate leverage to attack Paul and thus his presentation of the Gospel. Remember, Paul was steeped in Jewish tradition. Yeah, he would have recognized that. But having been brought up in it, it would definitely have stood out and he would have been able to identify. The Judaizers saw the difference.

That's why they were attacking it. But they were attacking it on a source and a source level. But Paul was saying that the source level argument was invalid. And that even if they were to go further, the medium argument was in balance because the medium was through revelation and not just this thing he learned secondhand through mankind.

The Galatians were familiar with Paul's story. We're going to, as we keep reading in this text, which unfortunately this morning we don't get to do, but as the lessons go on in this text, you're going to see that Paul just reiterates it just in case you missed it. And Bob obviously alluded to that. But the Galatians were familiar with it, so Paul's reference would not have been simply overlooked. It's not like they would have said, what? I don't know what you mean. When Paul came, I'm sure he shared his testimony. It would have been shocking.

If you were a Jew and you were being presented the gospel by a guy who had been killing people who were presenting the gospel, that would be an evangelistic tool, if you will. Once that revelation took place, you've got to understand the perspective that that what Paul's going to get to in Galatians 4 is that the purpose of the law was a schoolmaster to bring him to Christ. I mean, can't you imagine that revelation suddenly making the entire legal system in which Paul was raised and taught and taught himself really come into perspective?

Yeah. In terms of what the law was really all about. Yeah. I mean, this revelation was, that was all about me. Yeah. Well, and the thing that I think is phenomenal about the presentation that The law is a schoolmaster is it makes it important for us to understand that it's not just a logical, it's not just a logical thing you need to be educated to, but it is a change in where your faith is going.

It requires you to make a jump. It's a switch. It's not just a simple migration. That's the thing that I've noticed in a lot of presentations of the gospel is that people have tried to figure out a migration route. We will find out where your mind is at, and then we will manipulate the information in your brain to get you from A to B. And instead it is a change of where your faith is placed. It's a switch from on and off, not from manipulation. It's not a psychological game where we're going to Christianize you. It is a change from what you put your faith in, humanity, mankind, Buddha, Joseph Smith, pick one. Christ. It's a change of life source. It's a big deal.

Paul definitely emphasized that. The message remains consistent despite what, if it were human, would have been likely to have variations or contentions. If it was just man-made arguments that Paul had learned, there would have been lots of contentions. Because man-made arguments and constructions of messages, okay, if it's the gospel, and you've got yours and I've got mine, there's contention.

Some people want to say there is no sin. Some people want to say there is some sin, because obviously we can't allow Hitler in heaven. So I've got to have a gate somewhere, a filter. I keep picking on him, but he's a little hanging fruit. Pick somebody that people don't want to like. It doesn't matter who it is, and they'll figure out a way to filter them in and out. Whether it's through gene sequencing or whatever else, I'm sure God will have a good system for filtering out just the right people, because I don't like them.

Man-made gospels, whatever that message is, because the source is different, the medium is different, and the message is often radically different, and there's going to be contention there. When you've got two different sources, you have the Apostle Paul, And then you've got the disciples who are in the upper room. Was there contention between their Gospels? They took place in different times. They took place with the same effect and believing the same thing, which tells you that the source is the same. Man-made sources are different and they lead to different ideas. and they lead to contention when it comes to these things. So it's a unique scenario that God can orchestrate, but that man doesn't pull off. It's interesting, Randy, if you look at the epistles written by Peter and by John, ultimately, differently.

It really builds on the grace principle that Paul establishes. It's not oil and water. There's an emulsifier that really makes it clear in terms of how these relate one to the other. You can see authorial intent where he's looking at his audience and lovingly approaching the audience from where they're at.

I think that's a tremendous distinction, you know, when you look at the authors and the different texts, they're saying the same thing, but they know, hey, this guy thinks this way, and this guy thinks this way. You know, Paul knows the Greek mind. Peter goes, and John goes, much more towards the Jewish mind, and yet they're saying the same thing. often believe that the order of the New Testament is not just random. No, no it's not. In terms of the books. Oh yeah, absolutely.

When you start to look at some of these principles, and yes it's a bit philosophical, but I find the philosophy behind understanding the New Testament and how God did things Loving God's philosophy means loving wisdom. I consider, as a believer, we love God's wisdom in this text. Were you raising your hand?

Yeah, I was going to say, it's kind of interesting that the prophets, you know, in Ezekiel, it spends a lot of time talking about false prophets and how serious that is because they aren't telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

But anyway, so the prophets were expected to be 100% correct. Yeah. foretelling what was going to happen in the future. Now it's interesting that Paul is supposed to be 100% explaining why it happened. It's interesting and he has the scriptures and so he can be double-checked, triple-checked, everything else. And yet he is totally, 100% consistent that I've ever seen. I'm not that smart. I haven't been able to hear everything that he said. It seems that he has the same record that the prophets had of explaining what happened that they had of telling what was going to happen.

Yeah. Well, and that's, I think that's one of the powers of That is some of the power that exists in the Gospel and the New Testament is that Paul would come in and he would say I have this Christ whom the prophets have talked about and they could look at it and they could go oh wow so you're telling me these were the sequence of events uh-huh I mean like the ones that I could look here in Isaiah uh-huh like the ones in the Psalms yeah And he came here. Yes. So you're confirming the accuracy of the Old Testament. You're not undercutting the accuracy of the Old Testament. You're preaching a gospel that is consistent with God's character and his revelation all along.

And I can believe that? Yeah. Okay. Well, what do I have to believe? We just need to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross. He was buried. On the third day, he rose again to pay for your sins so that you could be identified. OK, I can do that. That's really cool. I'm sorry, I'm working myself up into an emotional state.

But the simplicity of the gospel is so powerful. Being the father of two little girls, I've got Abby who's seven, who knows the Lord, and I've got Evie who's asking questions, and we're trying to be clear about the gospel. Not sure maturity wise and brain development wise, quite where she's at, but she's close, I believe, in being able to comprehend the gospel and coming to know him. And it's exciting that it's so simple my kids can get it. She doesn't need a PhD. She doesn't have to go to Dallas Theological and go through the Greek and the Hebrew to grasp the simplicity of the gospel. I'm relieved that when somebody did tell me, this is how you share the gospel, that I already knew it. It wasn't so shockingly foreign, but then I could say, oh, it's that easy.

Okay. I see. I've been confused by legalism. I will clarify that. Legalism had told me, well, I needed to add on some other things, this Lordship stuff. You got to throw that in there. And I wasn't sure how that fit in because I couldn't really proof text that.

Um, but, uh, so it's, as we go through this, Paul throughout this text is, and he's going to continue to tell us about the source and the medium and the message. I've got some questions for discussion, just ones to ask here. We've got plenty of time this morning, so we'll take a look at them.

When we talk about the Christian life, we discuss the importance of the source. Why is it so critical that the gospel have the same source as the life? We talk about the source of the life being important. Why is it important that the gospel is the same source? happened because of the gospel.

Yeah, it's the same thing. It's not that you're taking them from one point, hey, you've got to believe this! This is the source of the gospel, you've got to believe this! And then everything that comes after that is a fruit of another seed. It's the same. The seed brings the life that you expect. It brings the fruit that you expect. They're related. It's not this switch. I thought I was getting this, but instead I got that. Does the believer have the independent revelation of Christ as the source of the gospel for confirmation? That's sort of a trick question if I ask it that way on purpose.

What does John chapter 1 tell us that the revealed word of God is? Or imply what the revealed word of God is? That the Logos was Christ. We have the revelation of Christ in the New Testament that we can go double check. If somebody says, hey, I know what the gospel is.

You got to live a good life. You got to try to pray a lot and you need to be able to say Jesus a lot and say amen after the televangelist. That's the gospel. You can go back and say, you know, I happen to have this really cool book. You should check it out. It's revealed by God.

And you can say, how about we take a look at this and we look and see what is the real gospel? Because we have the revelation of Christ. Now that is a bit of a trick question the way I worded it, but it is important for us to recognize the source of the New Testament on top of just the gospel. The next question I've got here is, why is it so critical that a believer understand the concept of faith as one discusses the reliability of the gospel?

Randy, going back to that other one, even though you have the book, you can give that book to somebody that hasn't been inspired or hasn't It's just a bunch of stories. This is true, but at the same time the Holy Spirit can use that to reveal the Word of God. And I'm saying it's the Holy Spirit. It's not the book itself. It's not the words. It's the Logos. It's Jesus Christ. It's the Holy Spirit that makes the gospel real.

Yeah, absolutely. My implication with that question was more that as a believer I can double check. But I agree with that absolutely. Trust me because I've had lots of atheists and agnostics that I've known in my life who you know, I read the Bible Okay, and what did you think it's confusing? I?

Read the Bible's weird stories. I mean that was freaky. What was that whole thing about a fire falling down from the skies with all those priests? Sounds like a weird freaky story the debt they know lies in was a cool story, but what was the rest of that? Oh So the world does not know how to understand the scriptures, and when they look at it, it's difficult.

Now the thing that is interesting is that I found that if you are willing to look at the scriptures of the lost person and show them the gospel, and show them the logical order of things, and explain to them as one who understands, they're willing to listen. I've seen too many times where people say, you just need to read John. And the person goes home, and they read John, and they go, man, that was some weird stuff. But if you sit down and you explain it, because they're lost.

It's like, you know, if I went to Yugoslavia and I went there and I had a map, it would still take me a really long time to get a clue about Yugoslavia because I don't read and speak the language. UPS, particularly problematic since the country is no longer. Well, yes, I'm sorry. I should have picked a better country. If I'm recording my face is my geography was out of date. Let's see. You know what? You know what? It's funny. Is it now that you say that? Never mind, I was thinking of the Czech Republic, because Alishka is there. But I didn't say the Czech Republic, just for the record, in case the recording missed that.

So the next question I've got in here is, why is it so critical that a believer understands the concept of faith, or has a proper definition of faith, as one discusses the reliability of the Gospel? When I say you just need to have faith, What does that make you think of?

Hope. Okay, hope. See, the thing is, I've heard people say, you just need to have more faith, or you just need to have faith, and they're really kind of talking about mysticism. You've got to get your gumption, and you've got to really, you know, make sure your core, abs, and muscles are really strong, because you're going to have that faith. You're going to do it.

Rather than, what is faith? How do we define faith? Believing what God has revealed. Believing what God has revealed. So when we talk about the reliability of the source and the authority, we're looking at having faith in what God has revealed in a reliable source and a reliable authority.

I hate it when I hear people say, you just need more faith, because I've watched people's lives crumble around them. I was having faith! No! You just had really strong abs. You were really just losing sleep praying a lot about stuff that you really didn't understand. Faith is in facts. It is not that we don't have faith, it is just that faith is not just quantitative. I spent more hours doing this than you did, I must be more faithful.

Stan? Mike Doyle always says that faith has an object. Absolutely, and that's probably a more simple way of saying what I was just trying to say. It depends on what the object is. I can have faith in my car to get me to and from church. But it takes faith in Jesus to get to and from heaven. One of those feels a little bit more substantial than the other. I already asked what is faith or how you define faith.

How about preaching? What is preaching? Do you ever hear people say, Oh, preach it! When somebody is teaching from the pulpit. It doesn't happen to all of us too often. is to proclaim the gospel primarily in the New Testament. See, we often say, oh, he was really preaching. Oh, yeah. And I would get confused. Oh, preaching. He's preaching and he's teaching. They're synonyms and they're just the same thing. No. I have the opportunity to teach sometimes and sometimes to preach the gospel. But they're not the same thing. And I just, for the sake of clarification, wanted to point that out. That's all I've got for my notes and the lesson this morning. Are there any other thoughts and questions? things you wish I had said, things you wish I hadn't said.

You know, when you think about that first question you asked there, Randy, when we talk about the Christian life, we discuss the importance of the source, why it's so critical that the gospel have the same source. I mean, in a sense, there's a simple answer to that, but then there's one that is not overly complex, but it's really an essential one, is that the cross was sufficient for both sins and the sin nature, right? Oh, yeah. In fact, that's an important detail. In a sense, I think in our evangelism and in the gospel, ultimately, you know, the message is overly simplified in that your sins are forgiven, right? But there's a lot more to the cross than your sins being forgiven. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think the wife is the source who lives, you know, in us as new creations in Christ Jesus because Adam was crucified.

Well, and that's where, as believers, and I can't draw a picture of it, but as believers, I think it's important for us to understand in a biblical understanding of the Church, I think of a rope. Is anybody familiar with a hemp rope or a cotton rope?

How the fibers are all interwoven and they're all moving in the same direction and they've been woven and twisted together. They're going to start and stop at different lengths, but the whole rope, as far as you see it from a big picture, keeps going. That's it. You don't look at the microfibers that are inside each one of those little strands.

And in our lives as believers, we need to make sure that we're passing that on for the continuity of the rope. If we were to take a look at the epistles in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, we would see that Paul is very concerned that, great, they accepted the gospel. Now what? Now they've got to grow. What are the things you need to do to help believers understand growth? So that you can continue on this twisting rope, if you will, of these fibers and these lives that are intertwined.

I love that I get to learn from each one of you that is in this room. That you can share something and I will learn from it. Because where you are in your walk is going to help me grow beyond that state of understanding that I'm saved. Great, I'm saved. Like Bob said, yeah, he paid for the sins, but it's a lot more than that. And I need your help to learn that.

And hopefully you'll learn a few things from me along the way that are complimentary. The nature of understanding the Gospel, I think, that has been cool in the five years, we've been almost six years now here at Holly Hills, is that as much as I understood the simplicity of the Gospel, upon finally at about 20 really having it stated more clearly, It's been the last five or six years that I've started to understand the consequences of the gospel. And I mean that in a good way. Sometimes when I'm talking to my daughters, consequences is not a good thing.

But the consequences of the gospel, hey, I'm identified. The consequences of the gospel, hey, I have the life of Christ that I'm living out in this condition. By faith. By faith, yeah. And that is the thing that so many Christians, they become believers and then Billy Graham sends them off and says, go find a good church.

That's like asking a babe, you know, who could barely crawl for some reason, we're going to give them a, you know, 11 to 10 to 12 month junk. A baby is born and then we're like, okay, go get some food. How do I know what's good or bad? I'm going to come across the first thing I can stick in my mouth and chew on it.

But as believers, if we have the opportunity to come alongside, I've got some acquaintances and I'll be careful how I say this because I don't want to name names, but I have some acquaintances who are really big on street preaching. And I asked them, I said, okay, you go out and you street preach and this person becomes a believer. Now what? Well, I hope that they will follow the web URL on this track and find a good church. I said, wait a minute, you were all worked up to get them all excited about Jesus and become a believer and you put all that effort in and then they became believers and you're like, see ya! No, now you have this opportunity to come alongside and grow them and feed them so that they can then go out and whether they're street preaching or doing whatever it is that they do to share the gospel, they're equipped to go equip.

And we've totally gone off topic for a while. 111 and 12 but I think what you know your point there is is that there's so much more than than the gospel after the gospel and that's where we really could get I mean we could almost do a quarter class on spiritual maturity and discipleship stuff except for that Mike and Courtney are doing roughly the same thing for for more than just one quarter all right let's close in prayer the buzzer has gone off and we will Say goodbye for this week. Heavenly Father, we ask that you just continue to draw the truths of the source and the message and the medium to our minds this week, that we may evaluate those things. in our own lives. Lord, help us to continue to love the brothers and sisters around us in a way, keeping in mind that we're constantly growing and edifying one another. And Lord, we just thank you for this time. In Jesus name. Amen.